Every since it was announced that Jenna-Lousie Coleman was playing the new companion on Doctor Who, there has been a mad scramble to learn more about her. Tonight, American viewers can see Coleman in a different role to get acquainted with her.

“Titanic” is a mini-series timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the disaster, told in four parts on ABC. Three will be broadcast on Saturday, with the finale on Sunday, and each episode covers the same set of characters, but from different perspectives and at varying stages of the journey.

Nigel Stafford-Clark (“Bleak House”) created this “Titanic,” but it was written by Julian Fellowes, whose hugely popular series, “Downton Abbey,” was almost as much of a hit for public television as Mr. Cameron’s film was for Paramount and Fox. Mr. Fellowes has his own claim to the story: the first season of that series opened with the news that the Titanic had sunk and that the heir to Downton Abbey had almost certainly gone down with the ship.

So it’s no surprise that this account of the disaster of the century is an upper deck/lower deck costume drama that could just as easily be called “Downton Shipwreck.”

Coleman plays a servant to one of the wealthier passengers, and her character is romantically linked to an Italian waiter played by Glen Blackhall.

For those of you who would like a preview, here are a bunch of her scenes (mild spoilers) leading up to the early stages actual sinking.